The chain of events leading to that fatal encounter was explained in detail for the first time Wednesday when Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters shared the results of the five-month investigation into Kim's death, as well as video footage from a police cruiser's dash cam. Taken together, Deters said, the evidence shows how two very different lives collided that morning – one, a violent man bent on killing cops; the other, a respected police officer with a wife and three kids.

"Sonny was everything Hummons was not," Deters said. "He was a loving husband, a loving father. He dedicated his life to this city and he paid the ultimate price."

Hummons' mother, Khanita Maston, was a witness to the shooting that day and disputed Deters' description of her son as a man determined to kill police, especially Kim. She said her son knew Kim from the officer's years of work in the neighborhood and liked him.

She believes her son wanted Kim to shoot him, not the other way around.

"I think he just wanted to die," she said.

Whatever the motive for the shooting, bad luck played a part, too. Deters said Kim would have survived if the bullet that tore through his pulmonary artery had hit his protective vest just a centimeter or two to the left or right.

Instead of striking the vest's reinforced material, it penetrated a seam along the side where the front and back pieces come together.

"It was just a horrible piece of luck," Deters said.

A conversation, then gunfire

Police and prosecutors say the confrontation that led to the shooting was set in motion the night before, when Hummons learned his girlfriend had filed charges against him. Deters said Hummons was distraught and told his mother he didn't want to be placed on a sex offender registry for the rest of his life.

He'd been drinking, Deters said, and lab reports show he had a "Valium-like" drug in his system. He also had a handgun, which police believe he got from an ex-girlfriend.

Maston would later tell police her son had been acting strangely, even though he assured her everything was fine that morning. She didn't know he'd posted an apparent farewell message on his Facebook page at 8:55 a.m.: "I love every last one of y'all to whoever has been in my life ... you're the real mvp."

She also didn't know about the gun, police say.

At 9:03 a.m., Hummons made a call to 911 warning that a man was acting belligerently in his Madisonville neighborhood. At 9:10 a.m., he made another call claiming he'd seen a man with a gun.

Around that time, Hummons encountered his mother walking near the intersection of Roe Street and Whetsel Avenue. She could tell he was upset and tried to calm him down.

A probation officer, Mark Osika, showed up after hearing the radio call about Hummons' 911 complaint. He didn't know then that Hummons had made the call, and neither did police, but Osika worked at a probation substation nearby and decided to check it out.

Once there, Deters said, Osika spoke briefly to Hummons and his mother, who knew him because he worked in the neighborhood. When they finished talking, Hummons shook Osika's hand and walked away.

That's when Officer Kim, who was working an overtime shift, arrived on the scene.

Maston said she approached Kim and told him her son had been drinking and she would take him home. She also told Kim her son didn't have a gun, a statement she believed was true until he drew the weapon moments later.

Deters said Kim grabbed a Taser from his car as he spoke to Maston. But before he could do anything else, Hummons stepped around his mother and started shooting.

It was an ambush, Deters said. Plain and simple.

"I believe his goal was to lure and kill as many police officers as he could," Deters said. "It was an attempt at mass murder. He was going to kill as many cops as he could."

Maston sees it differently. She said her son wasn't aiming at anyone and was saying, "Shoot me, shoot me, kill me."

Three of his shots struck Kim, including the fatal bullet that found the gap in his vest.

When Kim hit the ground, mortally wounded, Maston knelt over him and tried to comfort him. Deters said Osika, who was armed, did as he was trained to do and took cover behind his car.

Hummons picked up Kim's gun because he'd run out of bullets, and then fired several shots in Osika's direction, striking his car. Deters said he believes the shots toward Osika were intended to "keep him down" while Hummons waited for more officers to show up.

Officer Tom Sandmann arrived around 9:30 a.m. and found Maston still kneeling next to Kim. A dash cam video from Sandmann's cruiser shows Hummons, a cigarette in one hand and Kim's gun in the other, sauntering toward him.

Sandmann got out and moved to the rear of his car as Hummons fired, striking his windshield at least once, Deters said.

The officer returned fire 16 to 17 times, striking Hummons twice. One of the shots struck Hummons when he was down but crawling toward his gun, Deters said.

After investigating whether Sandmann acted appropriately, Deters said, it was clear shooting Hummons was the right call. "I think he deserves a medal," he said of Sandmann. "If not for the actions of Tom Sandmann, there could have been a lot more dead police officers."

The gunfight was over in less than a minute. After that, more officers, sheriff's deputies and paramedics arrive and the scene becomes crowded and chaotic. Kim is placed in a stretcher and carried to an ambulance at 9:40 a.m. Hummons is carried off at 9:45 a.m.

Interim Police Chief Eliot Isaac said investigators concluded everyone involved did their jobs well and followed procedures. But he said he hoped his officers still could learn lessons from Kim's death.

"We always learn from these types of incidents," Isaac said. "We must be vigilant. We must look after one another."

While some, including former Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, described Hummons' actions as "suicide by cop," Deters objected to that portrayal. He said Hummons may not have cared whether he lived or died, but he believes the evidence shows his main objective was killing police.

He said Hummons' motives matter less than his crimes. A decorated officer is dead. His wife is a widow and his three sons are without a father. His fellow officers and much of the city still grieve for him.